The Prince Who Ran Away

Moses grew up in a palace.

He wore fine clothes. He ate from golden plates. People called him a prince of Egypt, and they bowed when he walked by.

Do you remember the baby in the river-basket, the one Pharaoh's daughter lifted out of the reeds? That baby was Moses, all grown up now. But deep down, he knew he did not belong in the palace.

Moses was not really an Egyptian. He was one of God's people, the Israelites, and his people were slaves. While Moses slept on soft cushions, his brothers and sisters worked in the hot sun. They carried bricks until their backs ached. They cried out, and no one came.

Moses saw it. And something inside him burned.

One day he watched an Egyptian beating one of the slaves. And Moses thought, I will fix this. I will save my people.

He looked all around and thought no one was watching.

Then he struck the Egyptian down, and he hid the body in the sand.

But sand cannot keep a secret. By the very next day, everyone knew. Even Pharaoh knew. And Pharaoh wanted Moses dead.

So the prince ran away.

Maybe you know that feeling, when you have done the thing you cannot undo, and your tummy goes cold, and all you want is to run somewhere far away and hide.

That was Moses. Out the gate, past the city, into the wilderness, where the wind blows and nobody knows your name.

He had wanted to be a rescuer. Now he was a runaway, sitting by a well in the middle of nowhere, alone, with nothing left.

You can almost hear him thinking: I ruined it. I tried, and I ruined it, and now I have to run.

Far behind him, his people were still slaves, still crying. And Moses could not save them, not with a strong arm and not with a prince's crown. He had tried it his own way, and it had crumbled in his hands like dry sand.

While Moses sat alone in the desert, thinking it was all over, God was not far away. The Bible says God heard his people groaning. He remembered his promise. He looked, and he knew.

He knew every tear. He knew every aching back. He knew about the prince hiding in the wilderness, too.

The true Rescuer was never going to be a man with a strong arm and a quick temper, saving people his own way. The real rescue would come from God's own heart, gently, in his own time, the way only he can do it.

Moses thought the rescue rested all on him. It never did. One day God would send a Rescuer who would never run away, not even when saving us cost him everything. He would walk straight toward the trouble. He would reach right down into the sand where we hide, and lift us out.

But that day was still far off. Moses stayed in the wilderness year after year, watching sheep under the wide desert sky, sure his story was over. He did not know that out on those same dusty hills, a little bush was waiting for him, and one day it would catch fire and call his name.